University of Cambridge

University of Cambridge: Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics

https://www.mmll.cam.ac.uk/professor-shihan-de-silva-jayasuriya

Position(s): Research Associate

Department/Section: Faculty of Modern & Medieval Languages & Linguistics

Contact details: 
Email address: sd969@cam.ac.uk

College: Lucy Cavendish College

Location: Lucy Cavendish College, Lady Margaret Road, Cambridge CB3 0BU

About: 
Shihan’s research and publications concern cultural interactions in the Indian Ocean within a historical, linguistic and ethnomusicological frame emanating from international trade. She works on roots of contemporary music and dance through nineteenth century manuscripts of folk literature and song, and also through frescoes. Currently, she is working on a study of the Sri Lanka Portuguese dialect encapsulated in the oral traditions of African descendants. The project involves recording, transcribing and translating chant-like songs called manja passed down intergenerationally over the centuries.

Teaching interests: 

  • Intangible cultural heritage
  • Ethnomusicology
  • Indian Ocean migration and diasporas
  • Global History
  • International Relations
  • Creole languages and linguistics
  • Economics

Research interests: 

  • Language maintenance and loss
  • Safeguarding intangible cultural heritage
  • Identity and cultural memories
  • Code-switching
  • Creole languages

Published works: 

Monographs

  • The African Diaspora in Asian Trade Routes and Cultural Memories. UK: Edwin Mellen Press (2010).
  • African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. New Jersey, USA: Markus Wiener (2009).
  • The Portuguese in the East: A Cultural History of a Maritime Trading Empire. London: I B Tauris Academic Publishers. pp. 212 (2008).
  • An Anthology of Indo-Portuguese Verse. UK: Edwin Mellen Press. pp. 237 (2001).
  • Indo-Portuguese of Ceylon: A Contact Language. London: Athena Publications. pp. 188 (2001).
  • Tagus to Taprobane: Portuguese Impact on the socioculture of Sri Lanka from 1505 AD. The Ceylon Historical Journal Monograph Series, Volume 20. Sri Lanka: Tisara Publishers. pp. 459 (2001).

Co-authored Books

  • Land and Maritime Empires in the Western Indian Ocean. Milan: Educatt (with Beatrice Nicolini) (2017).

Book Chapters

  • ‘Multilingualism and the Sri Lanka Portuguese Dialect of an Afro-Diasporic Community’. In: Global Portuguese: Literary, Historical, Linguistic and Anthropological Approaches. Ed.s: Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya and Stefan Halikowski Smith. Leiden: Brill (2025), pp. 93-113.
  • ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage as Development in an Indian Ocean Island Creole Community.’ In: Creole Cultures: Creole Identity and Language Representations. Ed.s: Morgan Dalphinis, Duane Edwards, Michael M. Retzer and Violet Cuffy. London: Palgrave Macmillan (2024), pp. 49-73.
  • ‘Language Maintenance and Loss among Afro-Asians in South Asia.’ In: Language Contact and Language Shift. Ed.: K. Ihemere. Munich: LINCOM Studies in Language Typology (2011).
  • ‘Persisting Portuguese Linguistic Impressions in India and Sri Lanka.’ In: Portuguese in the Orient: The Portuguese in Sri Lanka and India. Kandy, Sri Lanka: International Centre for Ethnic Studies (2010).
  • ‘Reduplication in Indo-Portuguese, Malayo-Portuguese and Sino-Portuguese.’ In: Twice as Meaningful. Ed.: S. Kouwenberg. Battlebridge Publications, London (2002), pp. 185-191.

Edited Books

  • Global Portuguese: Literary, Historical, Sociolinguistic and Anthropological Approaches. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers (with Stefan Halikowski-Smith) (2025).
  • Legacies of Trade and Empire: Breaking Silences. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing (with Beheroze Shroff) (2023).
  • Sustaining Support for Intangible Cultural Heritage. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing (with Mariana Pinto Leitão Pereira and Gregory Hansen) (2022).
  • Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers. pp. 196 (with Jean-Pierre Angenot) (2008).
  • The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Africa World Press, New Jersey, USA, pp. 293 (with Richard Pankhurst, OBE) (2003).

Articles in Journals

  • ‘Impact of Multilingualism on Sri Lanka Portuguese.’ Ceylankan. February 2020.
  • ‘O português do Seri Lanca: situação atual.’ Folha Boletim da lingua portuguesa nas instituições europeias no. 60 – verão de 2019, pp. 7-10.
  • ‘Correspondence between Hugo Schuchardt, John Henry Eaton, Donald Ferguson, Edmund Woodhouse and William Goonatilleke on Ceylon Portuguese with Linguistic Insights.’ Grazer Linguistische Studien 84, Austria (2015).
  • ‘Linguistic Influences on Portuguese Burghers and Afro-Sri Lankans.’ Ceylankan Australia (August 2014).
  • ‘Cross-cultural Influences on the Language of the Sri Lankan Malays.’ African & Asian Studies 8(3):204-221, Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden, Netherlands (2009).
  • ‘Hugo Schuchardt Manuscript of Sri Lanka Portuguese Creole: Linguistic Analysis with Portuguese and English Translations.’ ORBIS, 41: 189-203, University of Leuven, Belgium (2008-2009).
  • ‘Portugal and Sri Lanka: Sociocultural Interactions and Language Contact.’ Oriente 17: 3-18, Lisbon, Portugal (2007).
  • ‘Tense Mood and Aspect in Sri Lanka Portuguese Creole.’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Sri Lanka, XLVII: 115-132 (2004).
  • ‘Changing Political Scenarios and Linguistic Innovation: The Case of Sri Lanka Portuguese Creole.’ Sprachtypol. Univ. Forsch. (STUF), 56 (4): 400-411 (2003).
  • ‘Grammatical Variation in an Indo-Portuguese Creole.’ ORBIS, 42, University of Leuven, Belgium (2002).
  • ‘Asian Portuguese Creoles: A Common Origin.’ EPISTEME 7-8-9: 459-466. Revista Multidisciplinar da Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Portugal (2001).
  • ‘A Unique Malay: Sri Lankan Malay Creole.’ NUSA, 50: 43-58, Jakarta, Indonesia (2001). 
  • ‘Sri Lanka Portuguese Creole: A Language in Eclipse.’ Indian Ocean Review, 13 (1): 20-21. (2000).
  • ‘Indo-Portugués e Sinhala: Inter-Câmbio das Palavras.’ PAPIA, 10: 66-77. University of Brasilía, Brazil (2000).
  • ‘Portuguese in Sri Lanka: Effects of Substratum Languages.’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 9 (2): pp. 251-270 (1999).
  • ‘Sinhala Borrowings in Sri Lanka Portuguese Creole.’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka, XLIV: 31-37 (1999).
  • ‘Portuguese Borrowings in Sinhala.’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Sri Lanka, XLIII: 1-12 (with R. Wijetunge, 1999).

Conference in Cambridge – video recording and programme

From 2:31:42 to 4:11:15
Panel 5:  Regional Approaches to Black Reparations: Brazil, Philippines and the Chagos Archipelago
Chair: Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya.

Tenth Cambridge Conference on Language Endangerment

Cambridge Language Sciences Interdisciplinary Research Centre

  • Leonard Woolf:  Political Theorist, Author, Civil Servant and Husband of Virginia Woolf.  Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge.  6 June 2022.
  • Ceylon Portuguese: Survival against all Odds.  Cambridge Endangered Languages and Cultures Group, University of Cambridge.  18 May 2022.
  • Linguistic and Musical Heritage of Afrodescendants in South Asia.  Cambridge Heritage Research Centre.  29 April 2021.  https://www.heritage.arch.cam.ac.uk/events/sdesilva

On 21st October 2022, join the first panel discussion of our ‘Community’ series in occasion of Black History Month.

The College’s 2022-23 academic theme is ‘community’.  As a first session in the series, we are glad to have a panel of two speakers, Professor Shihan DeSilva Jayasuriya and Dr Lorena Gazzotti on Black History Day.

The title of presentation by Professor Shihan DeSilva Jayasuriya is Collective Memories of an Afro-diasporic Community in Sri Lanka.

The talk will illustrate the importance of remembered rhythms and chant-like manja transmitted through an oral tradition which strengthens community bonds. This Roman Catholic community’s linguistic dynamics – losing their African language/s to adopting Sri Lanka Portuguese (Ceylon Portuguese/Indo-Portuguese of Ceylon) as a mother-tongue during the colonial era and more recently shifting to Sinhala – demonstrate a continuing adaptation process.

Your papers don’t mean anything: policing blackness at the Spanish-Moroccan border is the title of presentation by Dr Lorena Gazzotti.

What role does race play in the construction of illegality in the face of pervasive border control? Drawing on Lorena’s research in Morocco, this talk questions the category of ‘illegality’ as it is policed at the street level and experienced by different groups of foreigners in Morocco. It becomes then clear that illegality does not necessarily have to do with one’s paper: it is a label which is racially altered and expanded by border bureaucrats, who use it to differentially police the presence of migrant bodies pre-emptively visualized as legal or illegal. Whereas black people undergo pervasive containment procedures, white privilege allows white migrants to be oblivious of the border, even when their administrative situation is not compliant with migration law.

The talk will start at 6 pm in the Wood-Legh Room, Strathaird, and will comprise of 40 minutes of presentation (approximately 20 minutes by each presenter) followed by 15 minutes of discussion.

This event is free and open to all. Please click on the button below to register.

About the speakers

Dr Lorena Gazzotti is the Lucy Cavendish Alice Tong Sze Research Fellow and will be based at CRASSH during the period of her Fellowship. Her research and teaching analyse elusive surveillance in contemporary society. She looks at mundane forms of control as they unfold in spaces of ‘care’ – development projects, migrant protection centres, the modern university. Her current project looks at the ‘migrant reception centre’ as a space at the intersection of durable forms of coloniality.

Professor Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya, FRAS, a Visiting Fellow (Lucy Cavendish College), a Senior Research Fellow (Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London), a Collaborative Researcher (University of Colombo) and a Visiting Professor (Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan) is also a winner of the Rama Watamull Collaborative Lecture Series award from the Center for South Asian Studies & Student Equity, Excellence and Diversity Award (University of Hawaii). Her research explores migration, commerce and cultural exchange in the Indian Ocean; African, Malay and Portuguese diasporas within a historical, linguistic and ethnomusicological frame.

Seminar: Portuguese Intercultural Interactions in Asia

Discussing Leonard Woolf’s The Village in the Jungle” with Professor Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya

Date: 06/06/2022

In this lecture, Professor Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya will highlight Leonard Woolf’s iconic novel, The Village in the Jungle.

Lucy Cavendish’s Visiting Fellow Professor Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya looks forward to discussing The Village in the Jungle, a unique achievement among colonial literary works. She will focus on the indigenisation of the novel through Woolf’s mastery of the Sinhala language. Lives of the oppressed are portrayed revealing the power structures within which jungle dwellers lived in colonial Ceylon (Sri Lanka). A discussion with audience participation will follow the lecture.

Leonard Woolf was a British political theorist, author, publisher, and civil servant. He was the husband of Virginia Woolf.

Location

This event will be taking place in-person in the Reception Rooms in Warburton Hall at Lucy Cavendish College.

CAMBRIDGE Music Workshop: Tuesday 24 January afternoon

Ceylon Portuguese: Survival against all Odds.

CELC Seminar Series

  • Africans in Asia: From the Periphery to the Core. Annual Black & Minority Ethnic Groups Lecture at the University of Cambridge, 27 October 2010.

Cambridge Language Sciences Interdisciplinary Research Centre